Contents

Three hundred years ago, the SS Valiant was destroyed during an ill-fated attempt to cross the legendary galactic barrier. Starfleet had always assumed that the Valiant had perished with all hands aboard, until a pair of unusual humanoids arrive at Starbase 209, claiming to be the descendants of a handful of Valiant survivors who found refuge on an M-Class planet beyond the Barrier.

Even more shocking, the visitors warn that a hostile alien species, the Nuyyad, are preparing to invade the galaxy. Uncertain of how much of the strangers' story to believe, Starfleet orders the USS Stargazer to investigate at once.

Lieutenant CommanderJean-Luc Picard is second officer on the Stargazer. A young man who has yet to command a vessel of his own, he soon develops a special bond with one of the visitors, a strikingly beautiful woman who has inherited mysterious psychic abilities from her alleged Starfleet ancestors. But can Picard truly trust her?

The Valiant opens aboard the SS Valiant under the command of Captain Carlos Tarasco in the year 2069. A mysterious force has thrown the Valiant far from home and now the crew faces the grueling prospect of crossing the Galactic Barrier if they ever want to see Earth again.

The Valiant's primitive shields can do little to protect them from the Barrier though. Despite the fact that only the optical scanners can detect the Barrier, the effects it has on the crew are catastrophic.

Before Tarasco orders the ship to turn around, six crew are dead, one in critical condition, and the Valiant's systems have been badly damaged. In fact, the Valiant may not be able to repair her warp drive. Left to drift, the crew begins making their repairs. Relieved in part that Assistant Engineer Agnarsson is alive, the crew continues on their way.

It is only later that Agnarsson begins to manifest strange psychic powers. The Valiant's CMO realizes that the Barrier only affected those with extrasensory perception (ESP). Thanks to his advanced abilities, Agnarsson was able to survive and the Barrier somehow enhanced those abilities. They also caused strange personality aberrations however and Agnarsson soon begins to suspect the crew of plotting against him.

Faced with the possibility of being killed by the psychotic engineer, Captain Tarasco prepares to kill his crewman. Ordering the launch of a recorder (later retrieved by the Enterprise in "Where No Man Has Gone Before") Tarasco and his security officers then chase Agnarsson about the ship.

After Agnarsson kills several security personnel, Tarasco realizes the awful truth. He cannot stop Agnarsson on his own so he orders the evacuation of the Valiant and prepares to destroy his ship. The resulting explosion takes Agnarsson and Tarasco with it, leaving the survivors to drift on the opposite end of the Galactic Barrier with no chance of a rescue vessel.

The Valiant would lead to the creation of Michael Jan Friedman's Star Trek: Stargazer series. It introduces most of the major characters of the Stargazer line as well as explains how Picard ascended to the center seat of the Stargazer. Some of the Stargazer crew had previously appeared in Friedman's novel Reunion. The paperback reprint retroactively inserts it as the first novel in the series.